The Deep Forest

The Dark Forest is a re-imagining of Quiet Year to try and remove perceived colonialism from the game and to focus on humanising the other. I'm not sure that what definition of colonisation is being used here and there is definitely some confused thinking in the author notes about the destruction of the Native Americans and decolonisation. There are some fascinating games to be made about this latter topic but this one doesn't deal with the issue from my understanding of the issue.

Essentially this is a skin of the Quiet Year with the community being a collection of monsters who have lived through an occupation by humans. The humans have left or been forced out and now the community has a quiet year to build a new society for themselves and deal with the fallout of the occupation.

I liked the Quiet Year and the new perspective seems more interesting than the old game with the addition of a difficult legacy at the start of the game rather than a struggle for survival. The non-human characters would also seem to fit some of the alienation that seems to occur in the game by not allowing individuals to be played.

Looking forward to playing it.

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